Via All Facts and Opinions, saw this bit: Moore gives permission to pirate Fahrenheit 9/11:

Download Away: In a related story, it appears Michael Moore truly wants to make Fahrenheit 9/11 accessible to all. Scotland's Sunday Herald reports that Michael Moore is OK with folks making and downloading pirated copies of his blockbuster film.

Of course the agreement is only deeply superficial. From Zizek, "What Rumsfeld Doesn't Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib":

But the main complication is the contrast between the "standard" way prisoners were tortured in Saddam's regime and how they were tortured under U.S. occupation. Under Saddam, the accent was on direct infliction of pain, while the American soldiers focused on psychological humiliation. Further, recording the humiliation with a camera, with the perpetrators included in the picture, their faces stupidly smiling beside the twisted naked bodies of the prisoners, was an integral part of the process, in stark contrast with the secrecy of the Saddam tortures. The very positions and costumes of the prisoners suggest a theatrical staging, a kind of tableau vivant, which brings to mind American performance art, "theatre of cruelty," the photos of Mapplethorpe or the unnerving scenes in David Lynch's films.

This theatricality leads us to the crux of the matter: To anyone acquainted with the reality of the American way of life, the photos brought to mind the obscene underside of U.S. popular culture, say, the initiatory rituals of torture and humiliation one has to undergo to be accepted into a closed community. Similar photos appear at regular intervals in the U.S. press after some scandal explodes at an Army base or high school campus, when such rituals went overboard. Far too often we are treated to images of soldiers and students forced to assume humiliating poses, perform debasing gestures and suffer sadistic punishments.

The torture at Abu Ghraib was thus not simply a case of American arrogance toward a Third World people. In being submitted to the humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners were effectively initiated into American culture: They got a taste of the culture's obscene underside that forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy and freedom. No wonder, then, the ritualistic humiliation of Iraqi prisoners was not an isolated case but part of a widespread practice.

For Zizek, it's revealing that Bush has to go so far as to deny that the atrocities of Abu Ghraib represented "American values." On the face of it, who would think there was a need to deny that the acts represented "American values?" It's the same bizarre feeling you would get hearing a president say that infanticide did not represent American values.

If there were really no reason to make this denial, we would not be denying it. It is no accident that Rush and others immediately identified the ritual sexual humiliation with hazing rituals -- the rituals that make you belong. Acts of interpolation.

This is all weirdly textbook theory.

Zizek wrote about a realization he had many years back about what has been called in other contexts "repressive desublimation." It's power that is exerted by the demand  that you experience pleasure. (Think of the world of advertising.) Just as the female soldier bared her breasts and made a prisoner masturbate. It's almost as if Zizek wrote the script for this.

Great, now I'm going to have to see what republican software I'm running and get rid of it.

Knowing Their Politics by the Software They Use. It is perhaps not surprising that the parties find themselves on different sides in the politics of software as well. By By STEVE LOHR. [The New York Times > Technology]

From Wonkette:

Sure, the GOP had attack releases ready for all the major veep prospects. . . and they had their DNS pointers ready, too. KerryPicksEdwards.com takes you the slam sheet. But so does KerryPicksGephardt.com and KerryPicksVilsack.com.

Not surprising. But check out the longshots they also bet on: KerryPicksClark.com and KerryPicksBiden.com.

Should the Dems have taken these domain names before the GOP could get them? Some companies, at least, do practice a bit of defensive domain squatting. Microsoft, for example, might reserve microsoftsucks.com before someone else did.

But then, of course, someone buys the domain name microsoftreallysucks.com.

In the case of the VP-pick domain name, however, it's hard to see how this would apply.

Well, not really, but Google is constructing the Friendsterish Orkut. Could it have anything to do this post that I wrote over a year ago?

Failed internet business idea number 15959595 has left the building. .

So I'm blogging now, and I'm single. What's the first thing you do before a first date? You google the guy, of course. This can make it harder to make up an impressive backstory for yourself, since the guy is going to be doing the same to you.

But... what if some internet company could do it for you? For a fee, they could spontaneously create 10 to 20 blogs that just happen to mention you from time to time. Most of the posts would laud your intelligence and try to retell your latest anecdotes (of course, with the disclaimer, that you really had to hear it for yourself; your charisma is part of the telling.) A few blogs would recount how you broke someone's heart, but that you are still friends. Others would allude, tastefully, to your sexual prowess.

And just to add that touch of realism, a few blogs would claim that you're a total jerk.

Of course, the blogs would have to have all sorts of other entries about the events of the day, so that people would believe that they are real. Autopunditry.

Ok, never mind. I'm out to go Cruise for Dean.

This guy is driving me insane with jealousy with pictures and postings about his visit to Ashland. I'm dying for a week of white-water rafting and Shakespeare.

What's worse, they are also performing  The Visit, by  Dürrenmatt . That was the first long — or longish piece — of literature that I read entirely in German; I loved the play and I've always wanted to see a performance.

Since I've been blogging I haven't spent much time playing City of Heroes. Alas, I just discovered an RSS feed for City of Heroes news and updates. I just learned that the game had a major update, and I'm very tempted.

I was just wondering how best to kick-start a blog after a year away, and I ran across this post from Trash Heap.

What's the etiquette on taking a year or so break from your blog, and then resurrecting it? Do you spam your old blog buddies and tell them you're back? Or do you wait for them to run across it when they're checking their hit stats? If our budget hadn't been cut, we were going to hire singing telegrams, or at least b-grade actors and actresses to phone everyone. Who wouldn't want a phone call from Erin Gray or Lou Ferrigno?

I've been trying like hell to catch up with what's happened in the year since I, er, took a vacation from my blog after my hd crash.

Wish someone would just post a quick summary: "for those of you who have not blogged in 12 months."

So it appears there was the controversy over MT licenses. The recent fall and rise of weblogs.com. All the book deals raining down on people who started blogging around the same time I did. And many other things that I'm sure I missed.

I read a lot of IT/Software Development publications, but I'd actually skip stories about blogging, since they only made me feel guilty about having abandoned my own.

But I've been writing -- probably too much -- for a couple of weeks now, and it feels damn good to be back. Even if it means that my blog's home page, which carries 7 days of posts, is absurdly long.